ESG Analyzes the Economic Benefits of Gigamon Visibility Platform, Through Customer Interviews

The flood of data has accelerated. Up to 90 percent of all data that currently exists was created in the last two years, according to some sources. And the rate of data creation is only increasing. This has major implications for IT network managers, who must contend with both securing this data and keeping it accessible over their networks. As a new analysis from The Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) shows, a solution like the Gigamon Visibility Platform can pay great dividends in the ongoing fight to manage this data deluge.

How? The brief version is that the Gigamon Visibility Platform acts as a centralized network data collector and broker, sitting between the network and any monitoring and management tools. The Visibility Platform filters, replicates and forwards data with built-in intelligence, delivering only relevant traffic to the specific tools that require it. This has profound effects throughout the network, many of which are discussed in ESG’s whitepaper.

If you’d like to read ESG’s report, titled “Analyzing the Economic Benefits of Gigamon,” you can download it here. Or read on for some selected highlights.

Benefit: Reduced Hardware and Software Costs

According to the ESG’s analysis based on first-hand Gigamon customer interviews, organizations that adopt Gigamon report savings of 40–50 percent via several closely related effects:

• Fewer servers and appliances: By enabling monitoring tools to work more efficiently, the Visibility Platform lets customers greatly reduce their number of servers and appliances, by approximately 66 percent.
• Less complex servers: What servers do remain operate more efficiently, making it easier for customers to choose right-sized tools. This has the additional effect of extending refresh cycles.
• Total visibility in (just) one solution: Cloud and virtualized environments demand different tools to monitor…or do they? The Gigamon Visibility Platform can deliver total visibility into all of today’s varied network topography, which helps eliminate redundant costs that would be incurred by unnecessary point solutions.

For more specifics on all these points, see page four of the whitepaper.

Benefit: Reduction in Complexity

While the march of technological progress is generally good, it tends also to result in increased IT complexity, which in turn results in larger attack surfaces. ESG documents how the Gigamon Visibility Platform can reduce this complexity to more manageable levels, which brings numerous benefits:

• Fewer security tools: Layer upon layer of special-case security devices creates a tangled web indeed. By allowing Gigamon to intelligently broker what data goes where, organizations can eliminate the overhead of irrelevant data and greatly optimize security device infrastructure.
• Less downtime: Some downtime may be inevitable, but a less complex network is easier to keep online. ESG’s survey found that Gigamon customers enjoyed 30–50 percent less annual downtime compared to baseline.
• Reduced headcounts, personnel costs: A simpler security infrastructure is easier to operate and requires fewer hands-on deck. And it’s already hard enough to find qualified cybersecurity specialists.

These are just abridged highlights; be sure to check page five of the ESG report for all the details.

Read the Full Paper

You can find the full paper, “Analyzing the Economic Benefits of Gigamon,” right here. It expands on everything mentioned above and covers other useful points as well. The most interesting section, perhaps, examines the Gigamon solution’s ability to foster business enablement by better aligning the goals of NetOps and SecOps. But we’ve already said too much. Enjoy the free report.